In this episode, Robert Balfanz is joined by Susanne Diggs-Wilborn, Vice President for College Success for Achieve Atlanta. Our nation's public education system has always sought to prepare and enable each generation to be ready to succeed in the world. To be on a pathway to adult success requires not only a high school diploma, but some postsecondary schooling or training beyond it. Yet, the supports we provide to students to make the transition from high school to college and be successful have not kept pace with the need. In part, this is because K-12 schooling and higher education were designed as two separate systems with very little connective tissue between them. This makes it easy to get lost or to be denied opportunity into this breach.
Achieve Atlanta is at the forefront of this work; in this episode, Dr. Diggs-Wilborn and Dr. Balfanz discuss ways to help make students into community members, by facilitating the shift from just being accepted to truly belonging.
In this episode, Robert Balfanz is joined by Susanne Diggs-Wilborn, Vice President for College Success for Achieve Atlanta. Our nation's public education system has always sought to prepare and enable each generation to be ready to succeed in the world. To be on a pathway to adult success requires not only a high school diploma, but some postsecondary schooling or training beyond it. Yet, the supports we provide to students to make the transition from high school to college and be successful have not kept pace with the need. In part, this is because K-12 schooling and higher education were designed as two separate systems with very little connective tissue between them. This makes it easy to get lost or to be denied opportunity into this breach.
Achieve Atlanta is at the forefront of this work; in this episode, Dr. Diggs-Wilborn and Dr. Balfanz discuss ways to help make students into community members, by facilitating the shift from just being accepted to truly belonging.
Bob (00:00):
Hello, and welcome to the Designing Education podcast. In today's episode, we're talking to Susanne Diggs-Wilborn from Achieve Atlanta about how we can provide all our students the supports and experiences they need to make a successful transition from high school into college, and succeed once they're there. We can't wait to jump into the conversation, but before we start, we want to take a moment to remind you to subscribe to the Designing Education podcast. Wherever you listen to podcasts we're available: on Spotify, Apple, and Google podcasts, just to name a few. Subscribe to the Designing Education podcast and never miss an episode.
Bob (00:41):
Welcome to the Designing Education podcast series. I'm Dr. Robert Balfanz, director of the Pathways to Adult Success program and the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University. I'm delighted to have you join us today. This is the ninth episode in a series of conversations we'll be having with education leaders, thinkers, and practitioners from across the country. We'll talk about what will it take to create an education system that truly empowers all young people and sets them on a pathway to long-term success. In today's episode, I'll be joined by Susanne Diggs-Wilborn, vice president for college success at Achieve Atlanta. Our nation's public education system has always sought to prepare and enable each generation to be ready to succeed in the world. One of the key rationales for having a system of free public education in the 19th century was that it was needed to ensure that children acquired the basic literacies required to make a living in a modernized world.
Bob (01:43):
A driving reason why the US led the world in making a high school education the norm for all students in the 20th century was the realization that basic literacy was no longer enough to be prepared for adult success. Today, to be on a pathway to adult success requires not only a high school diploma, but some post-secondary schooling or training beyond it. Half of all good jobs, which could help support families today, go to young adults with a four-year college degree, and more than a quarter go to those with a two-year degree. That leaves a smaller and smaller pathway to success for young adults with just a high school diploma. Yet the supports we provide to students to make the transition from high school to college, and to succeed in college, have not kept pace with this transition. In part, this is because K-12 schooling and higher education were designed as two separate systems with very little connective tissue between them. This makes it easy to get lost or to be denied opportunity into this breach. A number of community-based nonprofits have stepped in to help design the supports and create the ecosystems that are needed, but don't exist. Achieve Atlanta is at the forefront of this work, and that’s why we are so excited to learn from them in our podcast. Welcome, Susanne. Before we dive in into Designing Education, we like to start by asking all our guests: when you were in school, what was a good day?
Susanne (03:01):
Hi Bob. And thank you for having me. For some reason, when you say school, I think of primary school. In California, we always started the Tuesday before Labor Day, which would've been yesterday. A good day back then for me was wearing whatever favorite outfit I’d picked out. I was excited about my back-to-school wardrobe and having completed all of my homework and worked ahead so that I was prepared and had all my assignments done for the next lesson. So this good feeling about my day started pretty much in primary school, but it really did persist for me throughout graduate school. And it was being about excited about back-to-school clothing, but also making sure I had all of my homework prepared and I had worked ahead so that I was ready to learn. Wow. Kind of nerdy, but that was me.
Bob (03:49):
That was great. Ready. You wanted to start out with a running start. That's wonderful. So let's start today by learning a little bit about Achieve Atlanta. Can you share with us what its mission is and who it works with?
Susanne (04:03):
Sure. Achieve Atlanta's mission is to help Atlanta public school students access, afford, and earn a postsecondary credential. That is so that Atlanta becomes a city where race and income no longer predict postsecondary success and upward mobility. On the high school side, that means that we work with Atlanta public schools, the college advising core, on one goal, and we partner with them to provide a college-going culture, but to also support our 11th and 12th grade students, all 11th and 12th grade students in Atlanta public schools, as they get ready to apply for a postsecondary credential. We offer a scholarship which is $5,000 for four years within a five-year period, or $2,500 for two years within a three-year period. And then on the postsecondary side, we have partnerships with 10 colleges, three non-profits, and we also have a coaching fellow piloting some work with out-of-state scholars to provide coaching and support.
Susanne (05:04):
So our scholar profile is about 5,000 scholars that we serve currently. They attend over 300 different colleges and universities. Ninety-four percent of them are black or Hispanic. We serve about one third of all Atlanta public school high school seniors who become scholars, and then 96% of them are eligible for Pell grants. Roughly 25% of our scholars attend HBCUs; about 21% attend school or college out of state, and that's been an increase of about 15 to 17% [compared to] prior to the pandemic. About 2% of our students pursue a technical and 22% an associate degree. Fully half of our students are first-generation college students.
Bob (05:55):
That's a lot of students you're helping. And as you said, you're working with over 5,000 high school and college students in Atlanta, and I'm sure you must be learning a lot from them. What are they telling you about what they need to make a successful transition from high school to college and to succeed in college?
Susanne (06:12):
Well, in high school, we are hearing that they really need understanding and guidance on match and fit for their college choices. They want social support and guidance, almost like a playbook for navigating the transition and the entry process to college. That's from graduation, all the way through housing applications, orientation, enrolling advisement. All of those processes that it takes have many, many barriers that many of our students have no experience navigating. And so they really want to make sure that they can be successful and they need that support and help and information. And while access to college spaces is really important, it's just as much about the relationships that are built throughout the process as when they get there. So finding that human, that's what we call it in our group. You know, finding that one person can make the difference between just being a student and being a community member. It's the difference between being accepted and truly belonging.
Bob (07:19):
Wow. I think that's profound, right? The difference between being a student and a community member. For too long, it's been sort of like—in a way it's harsh—but like the students are a commodity, right? Every year we have another batch of students. Yep. But what we need is, to your point, we need community, which is eternal, right? It's not a transactional thing.
Susanne (07:39):
Right.
Bob (07:39):
That's very powerful. How has the pandemic, or has the pandemic, scrambled this or changed what students are saying they need?
Susanne (07:47):
Oh, wow. Yes. We found out that really, we've always said we need to meet students where they are, and that really became important once the pandemic hit. What we found was that we met them most successfully on their phones. We participated in a lot of scholar engagement call campaigns. We evaluated tons of our communication strategies through phone calls, emails, and text messages, and we found that the phone calls were the most profoundly accepted by our scholars, because it showed that someone really cared for them, cared for their future. Somebody would spend time with them, listen to them and hear about the challenges that they were experiencing. They weren't just calling me to tell me what I needed to do next, which was important, but also being a listening ear really mattered to our students during quarantine.
Bob (08:47):
Yeah. Again, I think that's so true from what we're learning. I think the CDC is out today saying that one in four young adults reported having mental health challenges during the pandemic. And then they had a prior study saying that students that said that they had somebody, either in-person or virtual, that they knew cared about them as a person reported half the mental health challenges of those who didn't. So that human connection is just so deeply essential to feeling like you belong. And if you feel like you're belonging, cared for, you believe you can overcome more. You're not on your own. You're not by yourself.
Susanne (09:22):
Absolutely. And we've seen, even among our scholars, the need for behavioral health services skyrocket. We hear from our partners [about] the number of students they are escorting to counseling services on campus. We're hearing from faculty that students are speaking up in class and saying they need help and they need support. And you know, colleges and universities are meeting students where they are. They're creating pet-friendly dorms for students to bring their pets. Some of them are support animals. Some of them are just a friend on campus to help ease that transition. So I think everyone is really learning how to meet students where they are.
Bob (10:10):
Yeah. That's really wonderful. And again, just reflecting on the lessons of the pandemic. A lot of the focus has been on—it's appropriate—things like learning loss; but I think it also showed us how important that human connection was, and when that was broken, many bad things followed from that, you know? And then by the same token, when it's reestablished, it's really the pathway back.
Susanne (10:33):
Right.
Bob (10:36):
So, shifting gears just a little bit, in many ways Achieve Atlanta is… I see it as an ecosystem builder. You're helping to assemble and bring together the multiple partners and institutions needed to create a more seamless and supported pathway into and through college. And as I said, we have these two systems that were started independently and still largely are independent. And that connective tissue is needed to create an ecosystem to have that--
Susanne (11:02):
Right.
Bob (11:03):
And that's easy to say but hard to do. So what would have been some of the challenges you've come across as you've worked to create this ecosystem? And some of the lessons you've learned along the way?
Susanne (11:12):
So many lessons. My background is really not education. It really is consulting. My perspective in any new relationship revolves around helping and supporting, and that's a perspective that is shared across our organization with all of my colleagues. The most exciting thing about creating this ecosystem has been trying out these new, different ways of creating connection with partners, for creating that supportive web for our students and trying out new and different ways for us to provide that support. We could experiment and discover different ways to apply some of those professional tools that strengthened our relationships and that created those webs of support for our black and brown students. So we spent a lot of time in investing in this architecture of a partnership infrastructure, and each relationship has been launched using almost this consulting approach.
Susanne (12:24):
We built these cross-sector relationships by what we call contracting or behavioral contracting with these different institutions and entities and nonprofit organizations. And what we mean by contracting is really understanding how do we want to work together? How do we want to behave with one another? Our partners were chosen based on vision alignment. They accepted because we were aligned in the way that we want to support students and help them be successful. We made an effort to tie into their strategic plan, so it was a win-win. There was an ability to benefit from the entertainment of some mutually beneficial goals on both the high school and post-secondary sides. This alignment created interdependence and that interdependence provides a foundation for trust and honesty. What we found is that when we had that, it really reduced the need to posture and instead allowed us to hold each other accountable to commitments and deliverables and agreements.
Susanne (13:30):
The infrastructure also supported corresponding relationships between us and our partners in creating this ecosystem. We had relationships from senior leadership all the way to the frontline that interacts directly with our students. So as a result of that connective tissue as you've been referencing, we were able to, and still are able to, address barriers really quickly. Communication is direct, our change management is more agile, and the learning environment that is created, between us is supported, and it results in us being in what we call a stance of inquiry versus certainty. It really inspires innovation and supports innovation over stagnation.
Bob (14:23):
You really have learned a lot. \ I think there are a lot of important lessons there to be shared. What really strikes me is the intentionality with which you put the partnership together: some beginning agreements, leading to interdependence, which then leads to trust. Which then leads to the ability to move quickly, because you're connected. You don't have to worry about stepping on toes or who's getting credit for what. Obviously, it takes a lot of work to get there, but it really creates a much firmer foundation on which to build. And it strikes me sometimes in education…. It's interesting. You said you came from a consulting background. Sometimes it seems like in education, people assume since we all have the same goal, we should naturally work together, and not a lot of effort is put into how we work together. And then it quickly falls apart. I think that that's a really important learning: there's a lot of work to create that partnership in a thoughtful way, that gets the right environment shape for the partnership to flourish.
Susanne (15:23):
And you say something that's really important, because there's a lot of excitement around finding new and innovative ways to support students, to retain them, to get them to persist and to graduate. There's a rush to let's do the partnership, let's get this done, let's get this going. And I'm trying to think of his name from… the 10-minute salesman. No, that's not the name of the book, but… my background is organizational psychology. I'm an organizational psychologist by training. And one of the things that we talk about is to go slow, to go fast. If you build the foundation, if you can make sure that we trust one another—and there's a book called The Speed of Trust—it's really important to have that, so that we can go fast. But if we try to go fast before going slow, as you said, it falls apart, because there are some critical things that we don't understand about one another, we may not agree on; and you don't want to find that out when you're in the middle of trying to do the work.
Bob (16:31):
Yeah. And the prime example that just drove that home to me was right at the height of the pandemic, we had this dual reality where it seemed like guys, if you just work together, you solve each other's problem. But there was there wasn't the connective tissue, which was, we know there were many high school students that couldn't get the normal guidance they got to go to postsecondary, because that is delivered in person, and a constant nagging and nurturing, and systems weren't really set up to be virtual yet. And because they were uncertain and they didn't even know what was going to be on campus, they naturally held back. And college campuses were really worried [thinking], “Oh, we have fewer people enrolling, what are we going to do?” Some started cutting budgets and freezing retirement benefits. And I just felt like saying, “If you guys could just talk to each other and you could use some of your resources to reach out to those high school kids to tell them how to get to your college, it would really be a win-win,” but there was no connective tissue. So each side just pulled back, and kids got lost in that shuffle.
Susanne (17:33):
Right. ight. Absolutely.
Bob (17:34):
And related to that, it takes me to my next question. One of the things I've always thought was powerful also about Achieve Atlanta's work is that in this ecosystem, you really use data, and tools to interpret the data are a key part of the work. Can you give us an example of how you've done this, and the impact it's had? How you've used data, and tools to interpret it, as a way to build this ecosystem once you have the trust of the partners?
Susanne (18:03):
Sure. Our data team is integrated throughout all of our programmatic work, and I think that's really important. They're not consulting to us. They do consult to us, but they are also part of our team, and they understand the work in a way that that helps us to make the best decisions we can. One of our informal mantras is data-driven programming based on evidence-based PR practices. Our focus is on understanding the factors that influence the desire to not only attend and persist, but to complete college or any post-secondary credential for that matter. We have to understand those factors to build the partnerships we just talked about to appropriately support the students all throughout this journey, from high school through completion of a post-secondary credential.
Susanne (18:56):
So for some examples of some of the ways that we use data. In our partnership with Atlanta Public Schools, we have a data-sharing agreement, and based on the information we can get from Atlanta Public Schools at the time the student graduates from high school and is getting ready to enter into college, Achieve Atlanta is in a unique position where we have the most data on that student. We have information from their high school, but we also collect data during every renewal period for our scholarship. And so our data team has created a regression model that predicts the likelihood that an incoming college student will persist in college. It's called our persistence likelihood model. And our students that are considered high priority based on this model receive more frequent academic and social-emotional outreach before the midterm of their first term to reduce the likelihood of their stopping out. So early data patterns show a decrease in the number of students considered high priority by the second term. So we think that by PR providing those high touches when they first get there really makes a difference in terms of starting them out on the right foot., and being able to correct certain behaviors before the midterm. Yeah. Um, another example… I'm sorry, go ahead.
Bob (20:22):
No, I was going to say that's so powerful because that first early experience with failure can really set you back and really start you [wondering], does this [work] for me? Do I belong? Particularly when you're the first in your family to be there and maybe there were some obstacles or maybe it wasn't a hundred percent opinion backing you going to college from family or friends. So, it's really important to use that data to prevent that first taste of failure. Sorry.
Susanne (20:48):
Oh, absolutely. A recursive graph, right? Some of the information that we collect from our students every time they renew their scholarship, which is every term. Both fall and spring, we collect data on social supports and resilience and growth mindset, their study and work habits, food and housing insecurity, for example, and we use that to create another tool that we love. I said my background was organizational psychology, coaching leadership development. We provide a one-page coaching summary for all of our partners. On this one-pager, there's a summary of all of this information for our partners to prepare when they're coaching and advising our students. And they can intervene and broker resources for the student on issues that they had in high school, that didn't just go away because the setting has changed.
Susanne (21:44):
You talked about the impact of COVID 19 that really has exacerbated a lot of those needs. One of the things we found by using some of this data, both quantitative and qualitative, is that we implemented a student assistance program, which is like EAP, but for our students, and it provides short-term acute mental health services for our students and their families. And re the most recent data that we collected on those utilizing the service, 86% actually reported resolution to their presenting problem. That really makes us excited to continue using these data-driven interventions to impact these student outcomes.
Bob (22:27):
Yeah. That shows that, for lack of a better term, that close progress monitoring, but also knowing the circumstances, putting those two together, lets you be much more proactive as opposed to reactive.
Susanne (22:41):
Absolutely.
Bob (22:43):
So that's wonderful right now. I'm going to go a little wider in a way, and talk a little bit about the context in which all this great work is happening. We know that across the US, higher education has long been the province of the advantaged. In many ways, both explicit and implicit, they've worked to maintain those advantages. There's a long history of higher education through various means limiting access to women, to minorities, to lower-income families. Progress has been made through hard efforts in fits and starts. We've removed some barriers to access and success, but even as that's happened, others have materialized. So just talk to us a little bit about turning the mirror on ourselves, asking if we spout rhetoric about equal opportunity, what do we have to do to make real on that rhetoric, that we really are supporting equal opportunity? And in this modern era, we're saying that has to be including access to college and success in college.
Susanne (23:48):
Yeah. As you mentioned, our institutions were built to cater to the delight, the culture, the expectations of very targeted groups. It's important, I think, for institutions to acknowledge that the work of constructing equitable processes and norms has to acknowledge that business as usual does not take into account the way that other groups are experiencing the world, the way in which the world interacts with them, and what it feels like really to commit to a space that hasn't made significant changes to signify understanding. And so, although we're not a direct service organization, when there's a need, we actually do reach out and keep in touch or talk to our students. When COVID 19 first hit, we really got a lot of detailed information. We worked with our partners to contact every scholar personally, and then those who went to school out of state who were not assigned a coach.
Susanne (24:48):
We divided that list among our team and we called them. And so in helping them to navigate, like getting back home and getting their apartments or dorms locked up and their stuff stored, we were struck by how institution-centric the processes were. It seemed to us and to our students that many of the schools we talked to in trying to help students navigate were really about the machine, you know, keeping the machine running. There are a lot of similarities between education and healthcare. I was in healthcare for 20 years before coming into this sector. And one of the things it reminded me of is [that] around the late nineties, early two thousands, there was a lot of research around women and maternal infant care and what was happening with the high number of adverse effects that mothers were experiencing.
Susanne (25:50):
At the same time, there was a drop-off with OB GYNs who were going into that area of specialty. And over time, what the industry saw was that babies were starting to be born more between normal hours. You know, not that whole waking up in the middle of the night, delivering a baby. No, not so much. And so what we saw some of these trends, and it was very disturbing, [was that] things were being done to make sure that as safely as possible, babies were born during these convenient hours to give OBGYNs a sense of work-life balance, like everyone else. What that led to in the system that I was a part of, the healthcare system I worked for, was a realization that we had become much more physician-centric than patient-centric.
Susanne (26:42):
And I think that same kind of awakening has happened with COVID 19. And there our institutions of higher education [have] peeled back the layers and said, yes, we care about students. Yes. We want them to come to our institutions. But really, we've made things easy for us, but not necessarily for our students to navigate, and we're not nimble and agile enough to be able when something unprecedented like COVID hits. Even if it had been something that wasn't as catastrophic, the ability to change on a dime to make sure that students felt included and cared for really wasn't at the center; it was about, well, can we keep our doors open? Can we keep financial aid? This process is not going to change just because we're not in person, you still have to do these things. That was pretty disturbing, to say the least. I think inclusion means that there's a space for you and the way you experience the world. Belonging says we don't control the space, and no one has the right to negotiate your place here. Belonging says that the institution is nimble to meet your needs, and that it naturally happens in this community as a goal. That's where we want to get. And I think institutions are slowly waking up to that idea.
Bob (28:12):
Yeah. I think that's a really profound point about this institutional culture of universities where change is measured in a decade, it takes us a decade to get to a change. Well, the world's moving a little faster than a decade time now. I think that's really, really deep. And again, this ecosystem role where you see across these institutions is a unique vantage point. And it really helps both to put that mirror to themselves and say, “Hmm, maybe there's some things we can change that are more negative than we thought.” All right. I'm going to shift gears here a little bit for our final two big questions.
Bob (28:58):
If you look at the recent media about college, it's almost this different story: there's this reporting that students and parents are beginning to question the value of college education. That it's not doing enough to prepare them to get good jobs, and so it's not worth the cost. And on one hand, it's easy to make the case that this is overstated. If you clearly look at the data, you can clearly see that you're much better off getting a college degree than not. It's not even close. There might be one or two certain circumstances where it's different, but it's a general rule. But on the other hand, the world of work has changed very rapidly. And as we just talked about, universities and colleges are pretty slow to adapt to changing worlds. It may be that colleges do need to engage in some redesign to attune the value of what they're giving to kids and how it's useful to prepare them for adult success. Where do you fall on that debate, in your experience working with the various institutions in Atlanta, and have you seen examples of some being more nimble than others in adjusting themselves to shifts in the world of work and preparing kids for those?
Susanne (30:11):
Yes, there's a couple of things that are happening. We received a grant to explore that very question, and have involved a couple of our partner institutions that really see this as an issue, and are working diligently to rectify it, where that nimble agility to be able to approach the issue is endemic in the way that they work. We also entered into a partnership with a third organization, which cuts through this. So I'll share a little bit about each. One of the programs that we have partnered with is Braven. Some people, when I say that, say, what did you say? But Braven is an amazing program.
Susanne (31:07):
It offers, for the students that we have engaged in this process, an intensive 15-week college-level fellowship course. It meets weekly for two hours, and students receive job coaching and mentoring. They learn to master interviewing techniques. They are able to create their LinkedIn profile. It's a really deep dive into understanding a little bit more about what they want to do and connecting their current major and work in high school to that career, so it provides a pathway. It happens their sophomore year, so they're able to get at least two summer experiences, the summer of after their sophomore year and the summer after their junior year, whether that's a research experience, an internship, volunteer work, whatever they're able, they're better prepared [when they] have that early enough to make those connections to the outside world.
Susanne (32:07):
So Braven is one of those organizations that sees that as [crucial]: making sure the students have that social understanding to be able to be able to navigate in the professional world. That leads me to another partnership. Spelman college, my alma mater, is in a partnership with Braven to provide all of their sophomores with this Braven next experience, and that has been groundbreaking. You can directly see the link as part of Spelman's quality enhancement plan. They provide not only the Braven experience for all of the sophomore students, but they're also providing a skill survey, which is a talent intelligence platform for assessing student skills through the national association of colleges and employers.
Susanne (33:11):
They're also holding these NACE—which is the National Association of Colleges and employers—they are holding these career competency workshops. These are designed to help students improve their skills and their behaviors that are associated with any organization, eight career competencies. They've embarked on this experiment, to draw a tighter connection from the college experience to the work world. Those are two of the partners we're working with to make that happen. The third is Georgia State. Georgia State is at the forefront of a lot of amazing work, and as a partner, again, our students are getting a chance to experience this right at the beginning. They have done some research to show that students listen to faculty as their primary source of career guidance, as their primary source of information.
Susanne (34:11):
Traditionally, we talked a little bit about this in terms of the culture of education. Faculty have been hesitant to embrace this concept of teaching specific career competencies in a class. What Georgia State has done is worked with faculty as collaborators to prepare students for their careers and create this link to certain career competencies, reflected in the syllabus, to help students start to get used to that idea. What they've come up with is this model that when faculty are ready, transferring that knowledge, transferring some of that experiential learning, and translating that into the curriculum. That's a big piece of the work that they're doing across the university. Their objectives are that not only will students become aware of their career options and the actions they need to pursue them—which is huge—but that they will make the connection between what they're learning in the classroom and how that makes them career-ready. So drawing that straight line from one to the other and connecting those again, the connective tissue, and then that they'll be able to demonstrate their career readiness to potential employers based on these experiences.
Bob (35:32):
Wow. Those are marvelous. It's really like the next frontier, right? With first you working, getting kids to college and then through college and then from college to work. One thing I often say, my thought experiment, is to say, this is where we need to be. And are we there yet? Can we imagine the day when the principal of the largest high school in town and the undergraduate dean from the university, that enrolls the most kids in that town from the school system, and the hiring manager of the biggest employer, all find themselves next to each other in the grocery store checkout line and greet each other as old friends.
Susanne (36:14):
Wouldn't that be fantastic. Yeah, we're all in it together.
Bob (36:17):
Yeah. And we know right now that in most places, they wouldn't know each other. And that's part of the problem.
Susanne (36:26):
Yeah. And part of the experiment that we have grant funding for has brought together, not just a couple of our [partners]. Braven's a part of it. Spelman is a part of it. Georgia State is a part of it, but also the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, and the Georgia Chamber of Commerce. So there's this beginning to get us all at the checkout line at the same time, talking about the same issues, and how we're connected. The success of one is really interdependent with the success of the other.
Bob (36:59):
Yeah. Another one of those things, it should be common sense, but you have to work to make the connection. We're going to conclude by going big. What will it take for the work Achieve Atlanta has pioneered, an ecosystem and institutions working to provide all students with much more supported pathways, from high school to and through college and now on to work, the norm across the nation? So that those folks greet each other as old friends, because in a way they control the future of the kids of that community. What is it going to take for that to be the norm?
Susanne (37:35):
One of the things I've discovered… Achieve Atlanta was founded in 2015 and in the last seven years one of the things we've learned from our partners and just learned from being in this world is that everybody pretty much knows the solution. But we tend to make it more complicated than it actually is or needs to be: to make connections, to create ecosystems, to work together toward a common goal. One of the things that gets in the way is humility or the lack of. I think one of the basic tenets has to be admitting that you don't know what you don't know, and that not everyone—especially as we come out of this pandemic era—we really don't know what we don't know. Being able to fail fast, being able to experiment, being curious and honest about what we're discovering, and being willing, even if it's not going to be fast, being willing to change.
Susanne (38:40):
A big piece of this is courage. It doesn't mean that we're not afraid, but it's “feel the fear and do it anyway.” Having that type of orientation, I think, is critical to creating sustainable change across this ecosystem. The trust, I think, is born out of psychological safety, and that links back to the humility, the honesty, the curiosity, the courage. I think we all have to share the same worldview of what we would like postsecondary education to look like, and then commit those resources, not just, you know, human and technological and financial resources, but I think even more important, probably the most important, is the psychological resources, harvesting so much of the knowledge that's already out there in a usable way, in a very concrete and concise way.
Susanne (39:37):
And breaking that apart and saying, what do we need to do first, second, third, and fourth, and understanding that it's going to take time. It will take time, but that if we're in this together and we stick with it and we're honest and all the things we just talked about, we can make a difference over time. My mom is always fond of saying time is going to pass anyway. In five years, do you want to look up and say, we were still thinking about…? No, you could have been doing something during that five years and trying things out.
Bob (40:10):
That's great. That's great. Thank you, Suzanne. As we close out, are there any last words you'd like to share with the audience or let them know where they can learn more about what we discussed today?
Susanne (40:19):
Absolutely. Thank you for asking that. Our website is achieveatlanta.org. We have a wealth of resources. Our marketing and communication team has done a great job of continuing to evolve our website so that it's user-friendly, that it provides the information that I'm talking about here. We have a couple of publications in terms of the finances of our students during COVID, our impact report, lots of things that we're learning. We have several blog posts, but also we have a lot of information about our scholarship, and there is a page that we have called Pathways to Persistence that is just chock full of lots of resources, that is open to the public to peruse, for any student to take advantage of. You can find us on that website, you can find us on LinkedIn and Instagram as well as Twitter @achieveatlanta. So we would love to hear from you.
Bob (41:27):
Absolutely. You have so much to share and so much hard-earned wisdom and success. So I really want to thank you today. It was a wonderful and very informative discussion and a very hopeful one too. So thanks.
Susanne (41:39):
Thank you for having me.
Bob (41:41):
To bring our discussion to a close, I would like to thank Susanne again for sharing what Achieve Atlanta is learning about what it will it take to provide all our students with a pathway to adult success. One of the organizing myths of the US education system is the notion of self-reliance: it's on you if you succeed or not. In many ways, this is how we continue to treat the transition from high school to college. What this ignores is the existing inequities, and who is, and is not, provided the information, supports, experiences, and relationships upon which self-reliance rests. So let's just take one more example, right? On a positive note, an increasing number of selective colleges have taken steps to lower the cost of a four-year degree for low-income students. But yet they have few mechanisms to spread this word.
Bob (42:28):
So it's widely understood by families. So what sometimes happens is a first-generation college student might express interest in going to a more selective college. Then someone in their family inevitably will search that college on their phone. And if you do this, you could see almost inevitably, the first thing that will pop up if you put any college's name into your phone, is what its annual tuition is. Its list price. And we know those annual tuitions can easily be twice or more than a family's income. And this can easily just shut down the possibility of attending that college, as no one knows there's actually a means to get a full scholarship available. So we've talked, the universities make [an effort to] do something good, but the connective tissue is not there to get that knowledge into the ecosystem so it's widely known.
Bob (43:14):
So to provide all our students with a pathway to adult success, we need to move beyond this myth of self-reliance and recognize that 21st century public education needs to provide all students with the supports and experiences which enable a successful transition from K-12 to higher education and success in college. Achieve Atlanta is showing how it can be done. Before we go, we want to ask you to please subscribe to Designing Education, to stay up to date on all the revolutionary work happening in education. If you're enjoying the show, leave us a five star review, and please share the show with a friend or colleague or on social media. This has been Robert Balfanz for the Everyone Graduates Center in the Pathway to Adult Success project, thanking everyone for listening and inviting you to listen to the other episodes in our Designing Education series, wherever you listen to podcasts. Onward, and be well.
[AM1]Do we have the end of this sentence?